Weaving Man: Book One of The Prophecy Series

by Tove Foss Ford

  “I don’t think so,” Katrin said knowingly but without concern. “No-one here needs to shoot a deer more than once.”

  Menders ran out onto the front steps and saw Kaymar in the dimness, bending over a figure on the ground. He hastened in that direction. Seeing Menders, Kaymar stood, obviously rattled.

  Menders put his hands on his younger cousin’s shoulders. “All right?” he asked.

  Kaymar nodded.

  “I’m sorry, Menders – he surprised me and I killed him outright,” he said frankly.

  “Do you know who it is?” Menders asked.

  “No, it’s very odd.” Kaymar handed Menders a knife any self-respecting assassin wouldn’t use to scrape a carrot. “He was armed with this. He has no papers, no identification, no purse or wallet. Only this around his neck.” He held out a medallion. Someone extended a lantern, as the light was fading fast. Several of Menders’ Men had arrived on the scene. They peered at the medallion in the flickering light.

  “Ephraemite,” Haakel said shortly.

  “What the hells?” Menders asked aloud, staring at the body,

  The shoddy piece of jewelry was formed into the symbol of the prophet Ephraem, whose followers were obsessively unhappy and guilt ridden, considering anything outside their rigid faith “an abomination”. Because of their fondness for preaching loudly in the streets, decrying and abusing all and sundry, they had been driven from Mordania years ago by Katrin’s grandmother, Morghenna the Terrible. They had colonized an arid island near Surytam where they indulged their penchant for being miserable without stint.

  The man was gaunt to the point of emaciation and wore the roughest of clothing, not at all sufficient for the cold autumn weather.

  “Spread out,” Menders said to the men gathered round. “I want the entire area searched, outbuildings, everything. Let’s make sure he has no friends about. Check with Lucen, cover what he and his men haven’t seen to already. Hurry. I don’t want to have Katrin wondering why we’re not at dinner.”

  “Ifor’s going to be coming back from hunting, so don’t shoot him,” Kaymar added, ghosting off into the darkening woods.

  They scattered, leaving Menders by the body.

  Menders knew of six or seven potential plots that might involve danger to Katrin and felt little fear of any of them. Plots were all too easy to find out. People didn’t know when to be silent. The moment you had a plot that involved more than one person, the possibility of someone saying something to someone else became exponential. With his connections he knew about any plot almost before the plotters did.

  It was the lone lunatic who frightened him. Perhaps that was what this was. The jarring note was the man’s Ephraemite medallion and emaciation. Ephraemites were known to starve themselves. They thought it made them pure. If the Ephraemites had somehow found out where Katrin was and had decided that she, like everything else in the world, was “an abomination”, that could be a problem.

  To Menders’ way of thinking, Ephraemites were barking mad. That could mean an entire religious sect of potential lone lunatics – all of them with a longstanding grudge against Mordania – out there, posing a threat to the Royal Family.

  He heard someone approaching and looked up.

  It was Franz, coming from the house.

  “Just in from calls,” he said, coming over to Menders. “Eiren suggested I come up and have a look at the cause of all the rumpus.”

  He squatted by the body and moved the lantern closer.

  “Nothing much to him,” he said. “Let’s get him moved where Katrin can’t see from a window and examine him later. I doubt I’ll be able to tell you much.”

  Kaymar walked up to them, deliberately shuffling his feet in the fallen leaves to herald his arrival.

  “Menders, this is a long shot and probably worth nothing,” he said. “It could be possible that I was the target, if this man was here to kill anyone at all. If anyone on the place would be considered an abomination by the Ephraemites, it would be a nancyboy. An Ephraemite woman called me an abomination in Surelia once.”

  Menders hadn’t even considered such a possibility. Franz put his hands in his pockets, obviously pondering it. Both then shook their heads simultaneously.

  “We’re all thinking like assassins and we’re assuming he is an Ephraemite,” Menders said. “There could have been other motivations. He could have been mad or ill. He could have been intending to rob someone. It’s possible that this medallion is something he picked up somewhere, from someone he might have robbed. Kaymar, have someone go around to the farms and cottages tomorrow, see if anyone is missing that knife. See if anyone has seen him around. He could have come in on one of the trains. Let’s stop assuming he was here to kill Katrin or anyone else and see what we can find. I want the truth, not speculation.”

  Just then Ifor rode up on his big horse, a deer carcass behind his saddle. Uncharacteristically, Kaymar rushed to him and embraced his leg while he was still on his horse, regardless of the obvious discomfort of some of the Men. Menders noticed the desperate relief on Ifor’s face as he saw Kaymar unharmed. The expression was wiped out by fury a moment later when he heard the dead man had gone after his bonded.

  Cook yelled from the house, declaring that if they didn’t get in to dinner she would feed it to the chickens. They laughed, grateful for the distraction. Menders left them to sort through the story and went to the dinner table, where the subject of dead emaciated men was as buried as The Giants.

  Later that night, Menders turned in bed for the hundredth time, making Eiren stir. He decided he might as well get up for a while, or risk waking her. He dressed and went to the hay barn.

  The body was laid out on a row of hay bales. Menders sat on another bale and sighed.

  Who the hells are you, he thought. Why did you come here? I can’t believe that it was for Kaymar. That’s even more unlikely than you coming after Katrin. Were you desperate for money or food, ready to rob anyone who came along? How long were you out there? Katrin was playing near there only an hour before you jumped out at Kaymar. Why have you come into my world?

  He sat there for a long time before he went back to bed. One thing he hated was questions without answers.

  Franz went over the body the next day, and as he had predicted, came up with little.

  “The obvious,” he told Menders. “Skeletal, hasn’t eaten in a while. No overt signs of illness, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have had some internal problem, a brain fever or growth. That can emaciate people and it can send them mad as well. The Ephraemites tend to be covered with scars from their hobby of beating and torturing each other. This man didn’t have a mark on him. Short of carving him up to see if he was seriously ill, that’s all I can let you know.”

  A canvasing of the estate farms and cottages had turned up nothing. No-one recognized the knife or was missing one, no-one had seen a man answering to the description of the body. The stationmaster from the halt had seen no-one. No Ephraemites had been seen around the district in years.

  Two weeks later, Menders still knew nothing. He’d sent Kaymar to Erdahn, to try to roust out what he could about Ephraemites. Ifor had contributed what he could find, but it was not much more, just the known facts about the religious sect. They worshipped a single entity, The Sun, and unquestioningly followed a creed set out by the Prophet Ephraem, based on a conviction that everyone was inherently sinful and in need of chastisement. Little was known of how their society and religion were organized. They were extremely secretive since fleeing to their island refuge – and no-one cared enough about them to approach or contact them.

  The body of the man was consigned to a grave next to Madame Holz and his reasons for being at The Shadows with his blunt knife were buried with him. Ifor arranged a gravestone for him, the name Mister Enigma carved into the stone.

  Mister Enigma lived on in Menders’ mind, a puzzle with no solution.

  (31)

  “One Day I’ll Marry a Firebreather” />
  From Menders’ Journal

  We have found that giving Katrin tasks to do for Menck has done a great deal to give her a sense of purpose and to keep her busy. It was my original intention to work off some of the brattish behavior that began to appear at age seven, a time that Eiren assures me can be difficult for girls, but Katrin has taken her work to heart. She not only dusts and uses the carpet sweeper in Menck’s room, she also keeps him supplied with water to drink and wash in and supplies fresh flowers as well. She has established a cookie jar on his desk (though she is its best customer) and Menck himself stopped her trying to clean the privy.

  In return, he is tutoring her gently and carefully in mathematics. She is learning quickly. She does not grasp that subject as easily as she does language based disciplines and was not prospering with me in this regard, so I am glad to have him take over. It keeps his mind off his condition, which continues to worsen. It is becoming painfully obvious that it will not be long before he is completely paralyzed from the waist down. No amount of traction, massage or other treatment has made much difference.

  I’ve offered once again to send Menck to Erdahn to consult with specialists and have some treatment, but he has turned me down, reminding me that such measures have never done anything before, and have even worsened his condition. I take this as meaning that he has come to grips with the situation and is content to stay where he is. It is difficult for those of us who went to school with him and remember him being so very athletic and active. Even harder for him, I imagine.

  Menders looked up from his journal as the front door banged open. He would wager everything in his pockets that Hemmett had just come home from his journey to Erdstrom. He’d been away with his father overnight.

  “Willow! Where are you?” Hemmett began clattering up the stairs, shouting for Katrin. Menders smiled and shook his head. The little boy was still entirely devoted to her and told her everything. Listening in on his tales of Erdstrom would be amusing. Hemmett filtered things through his unique mind and the retelling was often hilarious.

  “I’m here,” Katrin called from the library. A moment later she ran past Menders’ office door and from the sound of things, was being enthusiastically hugged by the overnight wayfarer.

  “I brought you a present but it’s in Papa’s bag,” Hemmett blurted. “And guess what there was on the way back? A fair! We stopped at it and there were so many things to see! Papa won a knife for me at one of the games!”

  Katrin duly admired the knife and Hemmett’s travelogue went on.

  “There were stilt walkers and a lady dancing and there was a man who could breathe fire, just like a dragon!” Hemmett exclaimed. “Like this!” From the sound of things he exhaled violently, probably directly into Katrin’s face. She shrieked.

  “People can’t breathe fire, they would burn up!” she protested.

  “This man did. He had a torch all lit and he would put it up to his mouth and whoosh! Big flames leaping out. Papa said that he does it by taking some very strong drink in his mouth and lighting that on fire as he blows it out.”

  “It couldn’t have been real flame, he would burn his lips off,” Katrin said dubiously.

  “Papa says he knows just how to do it. He could send those flames out so far, I’ll bet it was twenty feet.” Hemmett imitated the fire breather audibly again and Katrin followed suit.

  “I would truly like to see that,” she said with a note of longing in her voice that made Menders sigh.

  She had asked to go to Erdstrom with Lucen and Hemmett. He’d had to explain that was something she simply couldn’t do because of the risks involved.

  “It’s because I’m the Princess, isn’t it?” she’d asked, almost rhetorically.

  “Yes, it is,” Menders had replied. He wasn’t about to start telling her comfortable lies.

  She’d only nodded and said nothing more about going to Erdstrom. She didn’t know that he observed as she watched the wagon going away up the road when Lucen and Hemmett began their trip, and that he saw her looking at the map of Mordania sometimes, drawing lines with her finger between The Shadows and Erdstrom or sometimes between The Shadows and Erdahn.

  “Why don’t you ask Menders? It isn’t that far. It’s nearer to here than to Erdstrom. You could be up there in an hour and you’re old enough to ride that far,” Hemmett suggested.

  “No, I can’t ask,” Katrin answered quietly.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I won’t be able to go. You can do things that I can’t do because I’m the Princess. It hurts Menders’ feelings too, because he’d like to take me but he can’t.”

  There was a silence.

  “I’m sorry,” Hemmett said. “I won’t talk about it anymore if you want.”

  “No, I like to hear. I just can’t go, that’s all.”

  Damn, Menders thought, swiveling his chair around and glaring through the window.

  Katrin was squelching her very understandable desire to rebel to protect his feelings. Seven years old. Damn. Damn, damn, damn.

  Katrin was laughing as Hemmett continued regaling her with tales of the fair and Erdstrom, so she was content for now. He would go and take a look at the tunnel leading to the stables. Lucen had mentioned that one of the timbers looked stressed, and Menders would rather it was seen to before the winter set in. Best to stop brooding and get busy.

  He went to the strong room, locking the door behind him before he lifted up the trap that led to the tunnel system. He lit a lantern and, leaving the trap open, stepped down the stairs into the darkness.

  The tunnels had held up well through the last winter and had saved infinite trouble and discomfort, though there had not been any blizzards or extremely heavy snowfalls due to the mildness of the season. But it was far more comfortable to move from the stables to the house in the quiet of an underground tunnel than it was to struggle against the wind, slipping on snow and ice. And soon enough there would be another hard winter, where the tunnels would be lifesavers.

  Menders took his time, inspecting each beam and support thoroughly. They were holding well, for the most part, though he saw a couple that could use work or replacement. Close to the stables he found the beam that Lucen had mentioned. It definitely needed replacing, it was cracking lengthwise. Probably a defect in the wood. Good thing Lucen had caught it.

  Menders walked on until he was under the trap door in the tack room. He was about to open it when he heard a quick light step on the floor above – Eiren, home from her school, putting away her mare’s harness.

  He opened the trap a crack and cackled wickedly. He had satisfaction of seeing her feet turn around quickly.

  “Klaas, there must be a big rat in that tunnel,” she said loudly, putting a foot on the trap and pressing it down gently.

  “No rats in here, Eiren,” Klaas, the stablemaster answered, coming close from his office. “I can’t take the chance with the children playing around so I keep traps and such – oh, I see. That kind of rat. I’ll leave you to deal with him.” He went back toward his office, chuckling. Eiren took her foot off the trap door and Menders pushed it up.

  “Come down into the underworld with me,” he intoned, looking up at her with the lantern held below his chin so it would cast eerie shadows on his face.

  “Nothing doing, sir,” she said, turning and finishing with the harness.

  “Then I’ll just come up there,” he replied, doing so and kicking the trap shut. After a kiss, she linked arms with him as they walked out of the stables.

  The walls of The Shadows were glowing gold in the late afternoon light, their color mirrored by the vibrant autumn leaves. As he and Eiren walked along the drive, not speaking, the front door flew open and Katrin and Hemmett raced out, laughing as they ran toward the pond. A moment later they were followed by Haakel, who had the task of shadowing them during Kaymar’s absence. His shadow and those of the children were long and blue on the still-green grass. There was a distinct tang of leaf smoke on the air.
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  “I want to take Katrin up to that tawdry little fair that sets up between here and Erdstrom every year,” Menders heard himself saying.

  “Is it safe?” Eiren asked gently.

  “No. But I want to all the same.”

  “The fair is leaving the district after tomorrow, according to the children at school,” Eiren sighed. She empathized with his frustration; it mirrored her own when trying to provide a normal life for Katrin.

  “Grundar shit,” Menders muttered.

  They stood for a while, watching the children, who were having a rock skipping competition. Hemmett was spectacularly good at it, Katrin not so much, but she made up in enthusiasm for what she lacked in prowess. Haakel, not as unwilling to join in the children’s games as Kaymar could be, was giving a good show himself. Menders couldn’t help smiling.

  After dinner, Eiren came into her room where Menders was resting after being dosed with the eye drops that he used twice daily. She carried a pile of clothing from the stores of castoffs kept for times when someone on the estate would need a garment. Menders blinked his eyes clear and sat up, pushing his glasses onto his nose.

  Eiren held up a little girl’s dress in a plain broadcloth, then rough garments for a man.

  “Perhaps…” she said, and then stopped.

  “Brilliant!” he exploded, looking at the little dress. There was also a scarf to cover Katrin’s golden hair.

  “This was my sister Sana’s until she outgrew it. I see she got rid of it before letting the last tuck down,” Eiren said, spreading the skirt of the little dress. “It’s worn enough that no-one would ever suspect that Katrin is a Princess.”

  “This suit of clothes will make everyone think that I’m a scarecrow,” Menders grinned, looking at the rough garments.

  “You can sacrifice elegance for a day, my dear,” Eiren said, much amused.

  “I have to go talk to the fellows,” Menders replied, getting up, kissing her and heading out the door.